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General

The General Purpose USART is a full-duplex synchronous/asynchronous receiver-transmitter proven in high-volume devices from National Semiconductor and available exclusively from Silvaco as synthesizable IP.

The General Purpose USART supports a wide range of software programmable baud rates and data formats and operates in either Synchronous or Asynchronous (UART) mode. It implements automatic parity generation and several error detection schemes. The General Purpose USART is capable of detecting a wakeup pattern to selectively enable the receiver and implements flow control logic for hardware handshaking.

The host interface of the General Purpose USART complies with the AMBA 2.0 APB protocol. Control registers within the General Purpose USART provide CPU control of baud rate, frame format, wakeup pattern detection, operating mode, and enabling/disabling interrupts. Status registers provide interrupt and error status. In addition, there are registers that hold the transmit/receive data.

In Asynchronous (UART) mode, the General Purpose USART communicates with other devices using two signals: transmit (TDX) and receive (RDX). In Synchronous mode, the General Purpose USART communicates with other devices using three signals: transmit (TDX), receive (RDX), and clock (CKX); data bits are transferred synchronously with the CKX signal. Flow control is available in both Asynchronous and Synchronous modes through RTS/CTS signaling.

To reduce chip-level pin count, the General Purpose USART interface signals can be shared with other on-chip functions through a General Purpose I/O (GPIO) Controller.

FEATURES

Full-duplex double-buffered receiver/transmitter

Synchronous operation using the CKX clock pin

CKX can be generated internally or externally

Asynchronous (UART) operation

Programmable baud rate between CLK/2 and CLK/32768 baud

Programmable frame formats

7, 8, or 9 data bits

1 or 2 stop bits

Odd, even, mark, space, or no parity

Hardware support of parity-bit generation during transmission and parity-bit check during reception

GATE COUNT AND PERFORMANCE

DELIVERABLES

The General Purpose USART is available in Source and Encrypted products. The Source product is fully configurable and is delivered in plain text Verilog source code. The Encrypted product, which is available in the Core Store, offers limited configurability (default parameter values) and is delivered in encrypted source code. Both products include: